“Look here, Eleanor,” Jack broke in again; “I’ll drive Margery home in the donkey-carriage, and you can go with Clem in the cab. I wish you’d give me the wreath off your hat, too.”
Eleanor willingly agreed, the wreath was adjusted on Jack’s hat, and we were just taking our places, when he caught sight of the luggage that had fallen out on Clement’s side of the cab—some fishing-rods, a squirrel in a fish-basket, and a hat-box.
“Oh!” he screamed, “there’s my hat-box! Take the reins, Margery!” and he flew over the wheel, and returned, hat-box in hand.
“Is it a new hat?” I asked sympathizingly.
“A hat!” he scornfully exclaimed. “My hat’s loose in the cab somewhere, if it came at all; but all my beetles are in here, pinned to the sides. Would you mind taking it on your knee, to be safe?”
And having placed it there, he scrambled once more into the front seat, and we were about to start (the cab was waiting for us, the cabman looking on with a grim smile at Jack, whilst energetic Eleanor rearranged the luggage inside), when there came a second check.
“Have you got a pin?” Jack asked me.
“I’ll see,” said I; “what for?”
“To touch up Neddy with. We’re going home a rattler.”
But on my earnestly remonstrating against the pin, Jack contented himself with pointing a stick, which he assured me would “hurt much more.”